You can be sure the Ivors will allow Adele to finish her speech. The first important UK music awards ceremony after the Brits remains a relatively small fish in the public perception, but as the prize that songwriters give to other songwriters, it may be the one that serious musicians covet most of all.

Nominated four times in three categories, Adele might as well start shifting Grammys to the shed to clear mantelpiece space now. How can she fail to win the award for Most Performed Work? Both Rolling in the Deep and Someone Like You are shortlisted after a year of such total airplay dominance that even Take That, her only rivals in that category, looked like minnows in 2011.

Her second album, 21, has rocketed at unprecedented speed into the King Kong company of the all-time bestsellers, pummelling Pink Floyd, mauling Madonna and now looking to dethrone Queen. Today the bookies are taking bets on how quickly it can become the UK’s biggest album of all time, a statistic that already looks like an inevitability.

What’s especially nice about the Ivors, though, is the way it simultaneously honours the backroom boys. Paul Epworth is due a pleasant evening with acknowledgement for his efforts producing both 21 and Florence + the Machine’s Ceremonials. Dan Wilson, last spotted in the limelight singing Secret Smile with his band Semisonic in 1999, gets equal billing with Adele here as the co-writer of Someone Like You. You might not recognise them if they wrote a multi-platinum single right in front of you, but their peers at next month’s ceremony will, and that will be the reward that counts.